Page 113 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Cat’s Paw

The bottle in which it is sold has a clearly marked expiration date and
the warning not to take the pills beyond it. As far as we know, Mrs.
Mallard was aware of that danger. Her physician, who was
interviewed, confirmed that she had a pattern of buying a new supply
of Lethenol long before the old had expired. The problem is that the
binder in Lethenol disintegrates after a period of time, leading to a
chemical change which renders the tablets toxic when combined with
aspirin. Mrs. Mallard may not have known this, merely following the
warning without further desire for details.”
“Mr. Mallard was out of town on the night she died. The
telephone records of the hotel where he stayed showed that he had
spoken with her an hour or two before the time of death given by the
coroner. According to Mr. Mallard’s statement, she called to say that
she was having Kreutzlieder symptoms, and that she was going to
take her medication and go to bed. We have no way of knowing what
was really said. He returned the next day, found her dead, and called
the family doctor. Since a poison was involved, a police investigation
ensued. The autopsy, to which Mr. Mallard did not object, revealed
the presence of aspirin and expired Lethenol in her stomach. Our
people found that the medicine cabinet contained both a new bottle
of Lethenol and an old one. Conclusion: in her fatigue and
discomfort she must have confused one for the other, and put
together the fatal combination.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” I chimed in. So it was true that
Mallard Books had been kept afloat by an inheritance.
“Yes, but the question remained why she kept the old bottle at all.
I could easily imagine a scenario where the husband, desperate for
money and the wife unwilling to part with it, plots to kill her and
make it look like an accident. He knows approximately when she will
have an attack, and plans to be out of town, establishing an
unbreakable alibi. In the meantime, he has saved an old bottle of
Lethenol and has determined that his wife is ignorant of the
interaction with aspirin. Before he leaves, he replaces the new
capsules with the old. She calls, as he knew she would, to complain of
her illness. He recommends a couple of aspirin as an additional
palliative. She trusts him and takes both pills, dying soon after in her
sleep. He comes home the next morning, switches the pills back to
their original bottles and leaves them both in the medicine cabinet

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